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Shall We Have Civil War or Second Thoughts?

Some of my relatives joined the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s. But they soon thought better of it.

By

Lance Morrow

Aug. 17, 2018 6:21 p.m. ET

In 2018 we have come, finally, to the punch line of an old joke—the one that ends with Tonto asking the Lone Ranger: “What do you mean ‘we,’ paleface?”

The joke originates in radio. In the mythical early days of the Western United States, the announcer told us, a masked man and an Indian rode the plains, searching for truth and justice: “Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear. From out of the past come the thundering hoofbeats of the great horse Silver.” In a jitter of neurons, however, the mind grasps that...